At the River

By Gary Williams

A collection of twenty poems, presented for your enjoyment, exploring the richness and variety of the natural world and our place in it. Topics include the power of the tides, finding one-self on waking, birds and butterflies, smelling the coffee, nautical yearnings, children, mortality, cyberspace and the Twitterverse, Neolithic man, nature, evolutionary thought, little poems, the world’s close call and finally two Masters of the Universe have a chat and almost make a monumental blunder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Williams
• Release date: Jul 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476203980

Gary Williams

“Michael Bublé isn’t the only person keeping the Sinatra Flame alive,” so said the London Times of Gary Williams, star of the West End’s “Rat Pack” and soloist with leading big bands and concert orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Melbourne Symphony, the BBC Big Band, Ireland’s RTE and the Lahti Sinfonia Finland. Other work includes performing for The Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace, ‘That’s Entertainment’ a tribute to the MGM musicals with the John Wilson Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, performing at Sinatra’s Palm Springs home for the LA Jazz Institute, Radio 2 with the BBC Concert Orchestra, ‘Winter Wonderland’ at the Royal Albert Hall, ‘A Swingin’ Session’ with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra in Los Angeles, ‘Big Band Wonderland’ and 'Sinatra Jukebox' at Ronnie Scott’s, ‘The Legend of Sinatra’ (UK tour), a tribute to the music of Fred Astaire presented by his daughter Ava, BBC Pebble Mill, Gloria Hunniford’s ‘Open House’ (with Donny Osmond and Burt Bacharach), the soundtrack for the Warner Bros’ motion picture ‘Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution’ and BBC1’s ‘Doctor Who Christmas Special’. As a headline act on the world’s luxury cruise liners he has visited over 60 countries. His three acclaimed Abbey Road studio albums prompted Oscar winning lyricist Don Black to say “In a world of Pop Idol mediocrity Gary Williams shines like a dazzling beacon.” He is the author of Cabaret Secrets: 'How to create your own show, travel the world and get paid to do what you love', described by David Ackert as, “a career GPS for cabaret performers.”

Book preview

At the River

Book One of Poems by

Gary Williams

Published by Ripple Press, Sydney at Smashwords

Copyright Gary Williams 2011

This book is copyright of the author and may not be reproduced in whole or part in any format without the permission of the publisher. For enquiries please email Ripple Press, Sydney at [e-mail]

December 2011

Table of Contents

At the River

Checking In

Urban Lions

Ruby Dawn

Moments Like These

Dusty Tins and Jars

Thrills and Fears in Urban Life

The Butterflies

Who Lives His Life

Chain of Custody

The Outer Limits

Grimes Graves

Where the Waves Rest

Evolutionary Thought

The Poem and the Novel

The Cloud Swan

Kittens

One Evening in October

The New Bird Song

And The Other One Said

1

At the River

At the river, wonder at its shaping by the sea

Whose flows in repetition oscillate without fatigue

To rasp the bed like a grater passing over cheese

Carving the channel deep, shavings accumulate to shoals

That, as the tide subsides, emerge to breathe

The current’s viscous grip with eddies swirling lift

Drag and roll, scour and flick;

Sand and pebble, shell and empty carapace

Forming dune fields like a desert’s drying wind

But here sea life thrives in the aqueous ambience

Mangroves have learnt through natural intelligence

To breathe through tubes and shed salty tears

Thriving alone in a zone half land, half sea

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